Everybody belongs. Everybody serves.
Disability
Dan
Diane
Staci
Michele
On the eve of the Paralympics in Vancouver, Canada ratified the UN Convention. Canada signed the convention in 2007 and ratified it on March 11, 2010. The US signed the Convention shortly after President Obama took office, but has not ratified it.
The Olympic Spirit seeks "to build a peaceful and better world in the Olympic Spirit which requires mutual understanding with a spirit of friendship, solidarity and fair play . . . " No games better exemplify the Olympic Spirit than the Paralympics. See results from the winter Paralympics which ran from March 12 - 21 in Vancouver.
Long ago, or so I thought, people said that children born with anomalies were warnings to their parents that covenant with the gods had been violated. The Latin word for "to warn" is monere from which comes the English word, "monster." Thus, children (and adults) with disabilities were thought of as monsters to be feared, because they were proof that the gods were angered by violations of their laws.
The r-word, which I'll name here only to make clear what I'm talking about, "retarded," is a deeply offensive word for people living with disabilities.
A new documentary, "A Place for All: Faith and Community for Persons with Disabilities" by the Interfaith Broadcasting Commission, is to begin airing on ABC affiliates December 6. Please call your local ABC affiliate and ask them to air "A Place for All." See Interfaith Broadcasting Commission for more information.
December 3 has been designated by the United Nations as the International Day of Persons with Disabilities. Read a snapshot here. What can you do in your church, your home, your place of employment do to recognize this day?
The National Association of Evangelicals produced a document in 2004 called “For the Health of the Nation.” The scope of the document reaches far beyond the “traditional” evangelical issues of abortion and marriage.
I read today about Sir James Dyson’s newest product, the air multiplier, which blows a lot of air at constant rate without any visible moving blades. It’s just a big hoop atop a base. It sounds amazing. Dyson and his company have made their living by thinking outside the box about commonplace things.
When a statue of Helen Keller was unveiled in the Capitol rotunda, Pelosi said, “As Helen Keller said: 'My sympathies are with all who struggle for justice.' In her lifetime, Helen Keller worked for opportunity for people with disabilities, for racial equality, and for the rights of women.”
Although we North Americans are getting better at emphasizing diversity in the workplace, people with disabilities tend to be the last ones that diversity practitioners seek to recruit for jobs. I ran across these reflections by Rob McInness today on why that might be so. He writes,
Meditating on Luke 9:50 this morning. Jesus said, “Whoever is not against you is for you.” Sometimes advocacy gets wearisome. It seems like one has to keep pushing constantly to see movement in inclusion of people with disabilities in churches, society, and other people’s lives. My temptation over time is to see most people as being against the work that Disability Concerns stands for. But Jesus pulls me up short on that temptation. “No,” he says, “Whoever is not against you is for you.” That turns the tide. Since most people are not against inclusion, they must be for it.